Toffee Cabin, Tuesday Evening

[glacial_queen]

It was a soot-covered Karla that arrived back in Fandom that evening. There hadn't even been enough time for her to get washed up before she'd been tossed into a Coach for home.

After Jaenelle had released her shield over the Hall, Lucivar, Saetan, and several other burly male servants had rushed out into the wreckage of the kitchen--and skidded to a stop when they saw a pair of very guilty witches surveying the damage and trying to figure out how they could spin this.

Saetan's lecture--and Lucivar's laughter--had been cut short when Holt came running up from the drive. "Coach!" he said, pointing. "From Halaway! Sylvia! Beale! Mrs. Beale!"

Terror galvanized them all into action. Saetan had practically tossed Jaenelle at Lucivar, barking, "Ebon-Gray Wind to the Dea al Mon. Now!" Before they'd even had a chance to catch the Wind, Saetan was doing the same thing to Karla. "Take the Red Wind to the Coaching station," he ordered Holt, who'd caught her.

One very uncomfortable Coach ride later (Holt had kept trying not to laugh the entire way) and one hastily-ordered emergency portal back to Fandom, and there was Karla, looking for all the world like a chimney-sweep.

"Kiss kiss," she said tiredly to the cabin at large.

[Mostly establishy, but open for cabinmates and friends. SP warning in effect, as we'll be heading home...sometime?]

Comments

[furnaceface]

//Explosions seem t'be the theme for this weekend,// replied Jono, projecting just a hint of a sigh to go with that. //I've had a few days to clean off, at least.//

So he didn't look like he'd been rolling around in soot. Anymore.

//Remind me not to let you do any cooking for me, luv.//

That was a joke. Har har.

[glacial_queen]

"I don't think I'll be doing much cooking for anyone for awhile," Karla said sadly. "What else exploded this weekend?"

In Karla's defense, there was no real reason to assume 'Jono.' She was thinking more along the lines of buildings and landscape, not people.

[furnaceface]

To his credit, Jono didn't answer with, 'if you find any teeth or ribs in the immolated clearing in the Preserve, I'd like them back, please.'

Instead, he hesitated, and then went digging through his coat pocket for his camera phone. He'd been looking forward to actually using it for what it was intended to do, but... Well, at least it took decent pictures. He flipped to one he'd taken of himself, just because he could, and then he handed it over to Karla.

... Or, well, held it out so that she could look. He didn't want ashes all over his phone.

[glacial_queen]

"Who is--ooooooooooooooooh," Karla said, realization dawning. She looked quickly from the image on the phone to Jono and back. "Was there another bout of Fandom crazy that I missed?" she asked, delicately.

[furnaceface]

//No,// Jono replied, looking at the picture for a moment, squinting at it as though he was trying to convince himself that he ought to be angry at his phone for making him look so bloody good with a face, and then closing his phone and pocketing it again. //No crazy with the exception of my own. I... let Raven heal me. It worked wonderfully, for a bit.//

[glacial_queen]

"How is that crazy?" Karla asked. "Forgive me, but, as you said, it did work. If only for a little while." She looked up at him, sympathy in her eyes. "It's not crazy to hope, Jono."

[furnaceface]

//Maybe not,// Jono sighed. Or, well, thought in a way that suggested that he would be sighing if only he could. //But it worked about as well as I was afraid it might. I'm just...//

He winced, and then shrugged, and then he was right back to nice, casual conversation. Totally fine.

//Raven showed up just in time, when I lost it all again. I came... entirely too close to hurting Didi.//

To killing Didi. But that was not quite as easy to say.

[glacial_queen]

"You're hurting," Karla said. "And the physical's not even the worst of it. You feel hurt, upset, disappointed, maybe even a little cheated. And right now you're thinking that maybe it would have been better not to try at all, maybe?"

Hopes dashed were bitter, indeed.

She wasn't sure how Jono felt about being touched, but she slid a tentative hand over to him anyway, going to take his hand if he didn't move it away first. "I'm so, so sorry," she whispered.

[furnaceface]

His hand, that was okay. People could touch Jonothon's hands. Jonothon's hands had never turned into uncontrollable waves of psionic flame. If they'd ever hurt anybody, it was in stupid moments during bar brawls, years ago. Nothing so big and terrifying as what he was.

//I could have killed her,// he said, closing his eyes. //I don't care about this anymore. I'm used to this. But I could have killed Didi.//

[glacial_queen]

"How?" Karla asked, lacing her fingers tightly through his. She also sent tiny threads of comfort, understanding, and friendship towards him, in lieu of the hug she wasn't quite yet ready to offer, in case he turned away. "What happened? Can you tell me?"

[furnaceface]

//I... can...//

It was odd, Jono noted, somewhere in the back of his mind, how whenever he got into conversations like this, whenever he got into difficult things to talk about, it was all the more difficult to project his voice so that it could he heard and understood. It took so much more focus for him to speak with his telepathy than it ever had for him to open his mouth and just make words.

This, then, was the psionic equivalent to a mumble.

//I left. Into th'woods. Could... feel it coming again. And then she was there, and I hit my knees, and-// The rest didn't come in words, so much. It was just a string of emotions, one after the other, fear, closeness to another person, horror-Relief-painpainpain-Screaming. And then some faint feeling of burning, a million miles away, and emptiness, and a cold, sick realization that things could have turned out the same way that they always had. Not wanting to get up again.

Tired.

//Raven grabbed her. Just barely in time.//

[glacial_queen]

The words 'that wasn't your fault!' rose quickly up, but Karla swallowed them back. True or not, it wouldn't matter to Jono, and telling him so would only make him fight back harder.

But it was the last part, the desire not to get up again, to just lay there, that made Karla want to cuddle Jono close.

"Would you like a minute?" Karla asked. "Some time when you don't have to be strong and okay and dealing? With someone else to just...be there for you? Cause I am, if you'd like."

[furnaceface]

//I don't know,// Jonothon admitted, wincing a bit. //I... have to be okay. I have to deal. If I don't, then it all gets away from me again.//

Things didn't tend to go well when Jono stopped fighting back everything from fear to sorrow to rage. The flames seemed to like pouring out right along with them.

[glacial_queen]

"I've shielded you before," Karla reminded quietly. "And sometimes, before you can really deal, you have to let everything out. Like lancing a wound, rather than just covering it up."

[furnaceface]

//This is... a little different than bleeding a boil,// Jono noted, his voice still stuck in some distant haze. //She didn't understand, you know. When I told her that I could have killed her.//

It was eating at him. It wouldn't stop.

[glacial_queen]

Karla winced. "No, I suppose she wouldn't, would she?" she murmured. "She wouldn't see it the way we do."

Karla groped around for something to say, feeling like the worst Black Widow ever. But was there anything she could say that would make him feel better? Granted, he couldn't control what had happened, but did that make it any less awful? Didi had been saved by a lucky happenstance: Raven.

"Did she come to understand?"

[furnaceface]

//I don't know,// Jono replied, hazily. //She... understands that it would have hurt me. I don't know if she'll ever... really understand why.//

He could have killed his girlfriend.

Nearly had.

//But she's alive. And well. And so it's nothing I should beat myself up over.//

Which wasn't going to stop him from doing so.

[glacial_queen]

"Oh and how's that working out for you?" Karla asked.

When sympathy wasn't enough, try some balls and sass. That had a surprisingly high rate of working, actually.

[furnaceface]

Said balls and sass were a bit of a shock to the system, after so many people trying to cram apologies and sympathies his way over the past few days. Jonothon blinked up at that, found himself staring at Karla for a moment while incomprehension circled his head like a locust swarm, and then finally managed to grasp what was going on, there.

//It isn't.//

Honesty, in exchange for sass. It seemed like a fair trade.

[glacial_queen]

See? Balls and sass. She was going to start writing prescriptions for that soon.

"Somehow I guessed." Karla looked at him for a moment, really looked. "So what's next?" she asked. "We've established that you can't remain Healed for long, and that Didi nearly died and there was no way you could save her."

The words were hard and her tone challenging, but she still held his hand like a lifeline.

"And now you feel like shit, beating yourself up for something that cannot be changed. What's next?"

[furnaceface]

//I haven't... thought ahead that far.//

Well, he hadn't. He rarely did.

//I don't want it to come to that. But I'm... bloody terrified that there will be a next time. And next time... there won't be a Raven stepping in at th'very last moment.//

[glacial_queen]

"Neither time was your fault," Karla said quietly. "You recognized what was happening and you tried to get away from everyone. Didi loves you, so she followed. You can make it so that no one loves you enough to follow you again, which, if that's your plan, I'm going to punch you several times in your eye because I know you'll be able to feel that."

[furnaceface]

//I would actually appreciate if you left my eye out of this, as I don't have much left besides,// Jono protested, though not with much conviction. He'd have it coming to him, and he knew it. //Anyhow, I've tried being insufferable enough to drive everybody away. It doesn't work. Yer all a bunch of stubborn brats.//

That last part was said fondly, yes. Well. Fondly for Jono.

[glacial_queen]

"Sweetheart, I've been called worse than that my entire life," Karla said, leaning back on the couch. "And I'm hardly going to disagree now. So get used to us just hanging around."

[furnaceface]

//Hang around, then,// Jono replied, waving his free hand slightly. See? Totally dismissive again. Everything was fiiiiine. //But nobody better go getting ideas about... hugs or anything.//

Don't get him wrong. Jonothon actually liked hugs. But he wasn't a huge fan of scraping friends off the walls with a putty knife, so...